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I used to love that magazine, but Jon Meacham killed it before the Internet did with pictures of Jesus or Mary on the cover every other week. Tina Brown apparently bought it just to humiliate it before finishing it off entirely. Even the name is antiquated.

RBM, that article, as billed, is distinctly unworthy of the cover of a news magazine. The guy's perception of his experience is what it is, but it in no way justifies his claims about brain function, much less the sensationalistic cover headline.

The linked article is recent, but it is very consistent with the magazine's practices for well over a decade. I read the article (online) before it was linked here. It would have been perfectly appropriate in his church bulletin or some other religious publication, but in a national news magazine it was ridiculous. He's the only person to have ever had this experience that opens the door to an entirely new understanding of reality, but to get the explanation, you'll have to buy his book. Spare me.

Periodicals that are surviving seem to be giving us articles that are too long or in depth than the Internet addled brain can find patience with. I think of "The Atlantic Monthly", Vanity Fair", "The Economist" - or those that have intertwined themselves creatively with their on line offering, e.g. "Food Network", "Sport's Illustrated", "Consumer Reports".

Patrick, if Meacham killed it, then it wasn't because of religion. It was because he turned it into a magazine of essays, thus becoming a medium that most Americans cannot understand. We like our pictures. Lots of 'em.

I'm pretty sure the article describes an irreligious brand of disbelief. By his own account the writer had been an unbelieving man of science who went to church because he was in the club, but his angel told him not to worry because he can't do anything wrong. So apparently you can do whatever you want and all will be peace, harmony and light on the other side.

I had an out of body experience many years ago. I underwent surgery at a time when general anesthesia was a more blunt instrument than it is today. After the surgery, I experienced floating up out of my body and looking back at it lying there in bed. I didn't travel to another world, but just flew around the town to familiar places and then back to my room and into my body. Real or not, it was pretty cool.

An article that came close to doing what the Newsweek cover story claimed would be worthy of every journalistic honor imaginable. Many other ways of addressing belief in an afterlife, near-death experiences, and so on might have made fine articles.

The actual article in question, built on junk science and wholly unsupportive of the big claims made for it, is just a way of selling magazines and generating buzz -- it's unworthy of a news mag cover.

Shoddy journalism, not faith, is the issue I'm addressing with that link. To respond with answers that boil down to "But I and/or many people believe heaven is real, and so I appreciated that piece" is irrelevant to those critiques of this particular article.

"The actual article in question, built on junk science and wholly unsupportive of the big claims made for it, is just a way of selling magazines and generating buzz -- it's unworthy of a news mag cover."

In other words, it's not unlike a cover story on anthropogenic global warming.

Your later characterization of 'junk science' is suspect of knee-jerking, given:

All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex. My near-death experience, however, took place not while my cortex was malfunctioning, but while it was simply off. This is clear from the severity and duration of my meningitis, and from the global cortical involvement documented by CT scans and neurological examinations. According to current medical understanding of the brain and mind, there is absolutely no way that I could have experienced even a dim and limited consciousness during my time in the coma, much less the hyper-vivid and completely coherent odyssey I underwent.

At any rate, this exchange could go on in more detail, such as citations with Einstein's work and others, less famous, such as Robert Monroe but this blog is an awkward format.

@ Thomas

OOB's were Monroe's 'specialty'. He's got three books about them (see Wiki).

Tom Campbell's 'My Big TOE' is an 800+ page worth of paradigm change for most, and if NDE's and OOB experiences are of interest to you then I'd heartily recommend it. It's a unification of metaphysics, philosophy and physics so you'll get a wide range of concepts.

Then, Tom's says 'taste the pudding' and start building your own TOE, which I'm personally doing and why I responded in this thread.